Advances in technology have opened up many opportunities for applications that go beyond the traditional ways of doing business. Electronic commerce over the Internet has become widely accepted, requiring many companies to either install one or more computing devices to host a web site and maintain accessible databases or to contract with data centers to provide such services. In addition to performance, important functional characteristics for these computing devices include reliability, availability and scalability.
One manner by which reliability, availability and scalability of computing devices has been increased is by allowing certain peripheral components to be added to and removed from a running computing device without rebooting. For example, the PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect) Hot-Plug Specification, Revision 1.1, Jun. 20, 2001 describes a manner by which PCI add-in cards such as, for example, network cards, ATA (Advanced Technology Attachment) controllers, SCSI (Small Computer System Interface) controllers, USB (Universal Serial Bus) controllers, and Firewire (a.k.a 1394) controllers may be added to and removed from a running computing device. However, PCI hot plug does not provide for adding and removing processors, memory, and I/O hubs to and/or from a running computing device. Accordingly, reliability, availability, and scalability of computing devices may be further enhanced by supporting hot plug addition and/or hot plug removal of processors, memory, and/or I/O hubs.